Tapo C401 - slow response

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xpd

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#324093 26-Feb-2026 08:45

Picked up a Tapo D210 doorbell, and C401 Kit last week to start giving the house some "smarts" and security.

The D210 is running perfectly fine, but the C401, appears to be extremely slow at waking up via the app.

Example : Go into app, select the D210, get a live view within 10s. Select the C401, and it sits there..... sometimes it comes up with a refresh option which I hit and again wait... if I'm lucky it'll eventually load the live view.

Camera firmware is up to date, wifi shouldn't be an issue (but will be doing extra testing next few days) and camera is fully charged (solar panel).

Anyone else have a C401 with this issue ?

My t/shooting this week will consist of :

Remove SD card
Setup detection rules etc (not set for recording yet - took while for wife to decide where she wanted me to put the camera for best coverage) and see if detection is recorded even though the camera appears to take ages to wake up.
Move camera closer to Unifi AP to ensure not a network issue (shouldn't be - D210 is same distance and works fine.)

XPD / Gavin

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freitasm

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#3465097 26-Feb-2026 10:35

Are these in a separate VLAN? At home I have all cameras and lights on their own IoT VLAN, set to 2.4 GHz only. This expands coverage and ensure no hoping between bands if the devices are 2.4/5 GHz capable.

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xpd

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#3465116 26-Feb-2026 11:20

No VLAN - will take look at to help keep things tidy :) . Thanks :)

XPD / Gavin

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Xile

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#3465213 26-Feb-2026 15:45

xpd:

Picked up a Tapo D210 doorbell, and C401 Kit last week to start giving the house some "smarts" and security.

The D210 is running perfectly fine, but the C401, appears to be extremely slow at waking up via the app.

Example : Go into app, select the D210, get a live view within 10s. Select the C401, and it sits there..... sometimes it comes up with a refresh option which I hit and again wait... if I'm lucky it'll eventually load the live view.

Camera firmware is up to date, wifi shouldn't be an issue (but will be doing extra testing next few days) and camera is fully charged (solar panel).

Anyone else have a C401 with this issue ?

My t/shooting this week will consist of :

Remove SD card
Setup detection rules etc (not set for recording yet - took while for wife to decide where she wanted me to put the camera for best coverage) and see if detection is recorded even though the camera appears to take ages to wake up.
Move camera closer to Unifi AP to ensure not a network issue (shouldn't be - D210 is same distance and works fine.)

I have a C110 and a C401.

The C110 will open up straight to the current view. The C401 can take anywhere from a second or two to a long while. Having said that the C110 is practically right next to the mesh unit. The C410 is about 10m from the nearest unit.

xpd

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#3465278 26-Feb-2026 21:10

No change with wifi changes. Once Ive got a connection to it, it seems ok, responds quite happily to anything I ask it to do. Close the app, then go back in, and its either still responding or dead again. The AP its connecting to is on the other side of that brick wall on the right - I know, brick isnt great etc, but all our phones happily run off that AP when we're out there, so a bit frustrating to work out.... especially when the Unifi controller shows all good. Might drag the AP outside over the weekend and see how it behaves ;)

XPD / Gavin

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xpd

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#3465380 27-Feb-2026 11:28

Interesting... took look at wifi stats this morning and altho theyre showing as poor now, I seem to be getting better response. Its set to 2.4 only for the cameras now. So must be wifi related - pain is its not something I can probably fix easily.... unless I can find a dirt cheap outdoor AP to put there.

XPD / Gavin

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richms

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#3465384 27-Feb-2026 11:54

IME 2.4GHz outside is useless as there is enough channel use from all the neighbours networks coming out of their houses that devices see that and hold off transmission. I ended up sticking the outdoor APs on ch 3 and 9 (from memory) so that all the 1,6,11 stuff didn't affect it as much. That got the ring cameras at the back of the lawn able to stream video to me over it and also means that when I am mowing the lawn using wifi for music it will work ok. Now the unifi chart is a lot cleaner as well. On 1 or 6 I could not stream tidal without it breaking up, and the connection to the cameras was glitchy as hell.

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#3465880 2-Mar-2026 08:35

There is a new firmware available. Didn't make much difference to my camera when I downloaded it yesterday evening. This morning I had trouble connecting but seems to be back to (my) normal now.

xpd

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#3465883 2-Mar-2026 08:43

Odd, mine isn't seeing that firmware.

(Shrug)

Mines been a little bit better since shifting the wifi AP a bit closer, so looks like it is just network related. I'm looking to move the AP away from the brick wall a bit more once I dig out a longer network cable :)

XPD / Gavin

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